On Compromise eBook

[Footnote 8: In 1779 the Academy of Prussia announced
this as the question for their annual prize essay:—­’S’il
est utile au peuple d’etre trompe.’
They received thirty-three essays; twenty showing that
it is not useful, thirteen showing that it is.
The Academy, with an impartiality that caused much
amusement in Paris and Berlin, awarded two prizes,
one to the best proof of the negative answer, another
to the best proof of the affirmative. See Bartholmess,
Hist. Philosophique de l’Academie de
Prusse, i. 281, and ii. 278. Condorcet did
not actually compete for the prize, but he wrote a
very acute piece, suggested by the theme, which was
printed in 1790. Oeuv. v. 343.

To illustrate the common fact of certain currents
of thought being in the air at given times, we may
mention that in 1770 was published the posthumous
work of another Frenchman, Chesneau du Marsais (1676-1756)
entitled:—­’Essai sur les Prejuges;
ou de l’influence des Opinions sur les Moeurs
et sur le Bonheur des Hommes.’ The principal
prejudices to which he refers are classed under Antiquity—­Ancestry—­Native
Country—­Religion—­Respect for
Wealth. Some of the reasoning is almost verbally
identical with Condorcet’s. For an account
of Du Marsais, see D’Alembert, Oeuv.
iii 481.]

[Footnote 9: Oeuv. v. 354.]

[Footnote 10: Mill’s Three Essays on
Religion, p.73. I have offered some criticisms
on the whole passage in Critical Miscellanies, Second
Series, pp. 300-304.]

CHAPTER III.

INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE POLITICAL SPIRIT.

We have been considering the position of those who
would fain divide the community into two great castes;
the one of thoughtful and instructed persons using
their minds freely, but guarding their conclusions
in strict reserve; the other of the illiterate or
unreflecting, who should have certain opinions and
practices taught them, not because they are true or
are really what their votaries are made to believe
them to be, but because the intellectual superiors
of the community think the inculcation of such a belief